AgdaPkt 2011-03-07 - Laserfiche WebLink

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l 7.A Page 1 REPORT To the Honorable Mayor and City Council From the City Manager March 7, 2011 SUBJECT Parking program status update RECOMMENDATION Receive staffs program status update and provide additional input, guidance, and direction. This is an information -only staff report. BACKGROUND The current downtown parking program was introduced in 2005 during the redevelopment of Redwood City's downtown including the construction of the "On Broadway" retail - cinema complex and the new Jefferson Garage. The parking program's objectives were to respond to new parking patterns following opening of the retail- cinema project, including an overall increase in the number of parkers and a much higher parking demand during evenings and weekends. Parking rates were designed to ensure adequate turnover of prime spaces in the downtown core. Validated and free parking were part of the program in an effort to attract visitors to the new downtown thereby stimulating the fledgling new downtown. From time to time staff has updated the Council on the parking program's status, and has occasionally requested modifications to pricing or hours for metered parking or parking in the three gated facilities (the gated facilities are the Jefferson Garage, Marshall Street Garage, and Middlefield Lot). Parking program modifications may be proposed to adapt to changing conditions, to reduce complexity in order to improve the user experience, or for other reasons. Effective management of a parking program requires a careful balance of program finance (costs /revenue), impact on the community, and parking demand management (parking availability). Four primary goals of Redwood City's parking program are to: 1. Effectively manage parking demand through the pricing structure. This encourages high parking turnover, ensuring reasonable availability of street parking for business patrons in the downtown core. It also encourages Tong -term parkers to use lower - cost periphery parking or monthly parking passes. 2. Provide an easy -to- understand program. An overly complicated program with a complex or changing set of rules is difficult for patrons to understand. 3. Minimize community impact. Although any change will result in some impact, the program modifications should be designed and implemented to minimize the impact as appropriate and possible. 4. Provide revenue to cover expenditures. Since implementation of the current Downtown Parking Management Plan, the program has run at a deficit, requiring transfer of money from the General Fund into the Parking Fund each fiscal year. Please see Parking Fund Historical Performance (Exhibit A). Increasing the parking